Martina Hingis loves tennis unconditionally. You can see the excitement in her face, and that alone makes her special among the prodigies in women's tennis who have their stuff in women's over the years.
What makes her even more special is that she has already carved out a place in history. Just 16 years old, Hingis became the youngest winner of a Grand Slam tournament in this century when she captured the title at the 1997 Austrailian Open in January, younger than Monica Seles when she won the French Open, younger than Tracy Austin when she won the U.S. Open.
Hingis, who turned professional at age 14, is now ranked No. 2 in the world behind Steffi Graf but ahead of Seles. This year she has won all three tournaments she has entered. (Hingis was to face Graf in the finals in Tokyo, but Graf was forced to withdraw with an injury.) People are beginning to call Hingis the future of women's tennis, and predictably, the money is flowing in. During the Australian Open, she signed five-year, $10 million contract with the apparel company Sergio Tacchini.
Austin, who knows a thing or two about being a child tennis prodigy, is impressed with Hingis's maturity as a tennis player. "She has an instinct of where to hit every ball," Austin told me. "Champions have that innate sense, like a sixth sense, of what shot to hit to get their oppenents in the most trouble. Martina (Navratilova), Steffi and Monica have that. That's the key to being a champion."
Hingis was literally born to play tennis. Her mother, Melanie Molitor, who coaches her, named her after Martina Navratilova and raised her to be a tennis cahmpion. This is not a media created story, it's how life was in the Hingis household. Molitor divorced Hingis's father when Hingis was three, and the family moved from Czechslovakia to Switzerland. Molitor then met and married a swiss businessman, which gave her the financial freedom to raise a tennis champion.
Hingis doesn't moan about not having a normal life, because to her playing tennis is normal. While she plays hard, winning at all costs is not what she wants most. (Actually, what she wants most is to be older so she can go out on dates with boys.) On court, she is as emotional as your average high school teenager. When she misses a shot, Hingis grimaces or bites the end of her racket. When she is angry, she has been known to toss her racket like a frustrated kid. When she hits a winner, she slaps her thigh in excitement.
Unlike Tennis' whiz kids in the past who faded for one reason or another, Hingis understands that the result of one tennis match, one tennis tournament, or even an entire season is not an absolute. If you play the pro tour for 10 or 15 years, there will be time. "Tennis is not like the plympics," she said last September in an interview at the U.S. Open, where she reached the semifinals before losing to Graf. "You don't train and train and train and get one chance for happiness every four years."
Hingis appears to have founf the all-important balance between tennis and life. When she's not pllaying in a tournament, she practices about an hour and a half a day, less time than she spends riding her horses. In Australia, she even went to the local stable on her off-days. One afternoon, she had a real scare when she was thrown from a horse named Magic Girl. Not only did she brush herself off and get right back on, she later bought the horse.